Airmail

I am a young girl in a pink shirt and hand-me-down blue shorts skipping my dirty white sneakers along the sidewalk. I am prancing and hopping over cement on a spring day. I am going to see Mrs. Chersie who lives at the end of our road. Our road has high trees. The third tree on our side has a big rotten hole that ants and grubs and beetles live in. I stuff it with old dry leaves and orange peels to feed them. One time I put a dollar fifty in quarters in there to save. But I spent my stash a quarter at a time on five cent candy. I ate them on the sidewalk while playing with the maple helicopters, throwing handfuls in the air. I like to pretend that it is raining these sorts of things. The rain is twirling green.

On good days Mrs. Chersie delivers warm peanut butter cookies and cold lemonade to me or anyone who will recite from her favourite book. Her house has old hardcovers on the stairway and newspaper clippings in neat piles; there are telephone pole insulators to hold the papers in one place. She has spider plants with so many spiders that you can pretend you are in the jungle. Mrs. Chersie's favourite book has everything in it; it talks about the tides and ancient battles. I find the book hard to read, but after I have read ten pages or so Mrs. Chersie goes off into her thoughts and I can go and explore her house if I am quiet.

One time I found a letter somebody wrote Mrs. Chersie. It was in one of the envelopes I liked, with the red and blue around the sides. I hated that I never got letters like this, so I took it to the bathroom and locked the door. I sat on the edge of the tub and I read the whole thing three times to make sure I got it right.

The last three lines said:
It is out of your hands.
Give my love to Grady.
I love you. Suzanne

The letter talked about Europe, it mentioned important cities like Cordoba in Spain and some smaller ones in France and Portugal that I cannot remember. The letter talked about candle wax and headaches, grown-up sex in hotel rooms. Then the letter talked about loneliness, about broken toilets and cigarettes, and pain, so much pain. I understood what was happening. I let myself slip down to the floor of the bathroom, because I knew. Suzanne killed herself. But before she killed herself, she was sitting down to write Mrs. Chersie a letter, this letter, for me, to my Mrs. Chersie.

When I read this I pictured Mrs. Chersie's hands. Her large hands, with the nails trimmed short, her working hands, for lifting things around the yard as Mrs. Chersie does. I pictured Mrs. Chersie's hands as they would have held this letter when she read it for the first time. Her hands as they are playing with the corners, as they are shaking uncontrollably. Downstairs Mrs. Chersie is still in her thoughts, looking at the birds out the window. I hold my back to the cold tub. Before I know it I am asleep and dreaming of Suzanne and how she killed herself, all the many lonely ways. My child heart is excited, because I have discovered something. I have discovered a secret about my friend Mrs. Chersie. I have also discovered a secret about me. I am terrified of dying.

Into Space

does anybody read this?
anyone? please if you do,.. comment anonymously or send a note.
I have no idea who is out there.
please, it would comfort me.

Gin House Blues

I pushed my cheek against the rim of the cold porcelin basin. Too drunk to smell the uncleaned toilet. Too drunk to notice the brown stains dripping from just underneath the rim. Over ten ounces in an hour. Before now I didn't realise that I secretly wished to die. I just waited for it to hit me, and now I'm here under the flourescent lights in my bar-mate's bathroom. She has decorated with a rubber duck motif. I keep drinking half glasses of water, puking them into the toilet, and then knocking over the remainder of the water onto the bathroom floor. G. comes in from time to time to fill the glass and rub my back. From the bottom of my stomach my esophagus releases an orange-red sludge, while the yellow ducks dance towards me from the shower curtain. This is the most pain I have ever experienced in my entire life.

In the living room I can hear my coworkers talking. "That's bad man, she's a fucking mess", it's Scottie's voice, the kitchen boy. Don't say that scottie. Don't say that I'm a mess. I had worked so hard to keep my recent anguish a private suffering. Describing the details of my heartache rationally, outlining only my capability to overcome, to transcend. And now, although I've told them nothing, they know. They are watching me self-destruct. The most unbecoming feature of a person is a delusional romanticism. Correction-- a broken heart fixed on its own defeat. I have not hit rock bottom until I loose an earring.

Catch, Release

L. just has to pass her hand over my right shoulder and I flinch. "God. You're tense", she speaks softly. She uses her hand to brush my aching muscle, the shoulder one, deltoid I think. We talk. We brew some tea and she tells me about the week she spent wandering around in the woods. I love to hear refreshing news of springtime. People climbing in trees, touching flowers with latin names. I remember in the fall when M. and I collected chanterelles, and I remember drinking mushroom vodka. I remember years ago showing a bloodroot flower to some kids. I remember talking to trees, sleeping between their roots. I spent hours in the water searching endlessly for crayfish. Catch and release. I would make them endure tedious anatomical examinations. Just like the tree-bark, just like the bloodroot. Which is what you can use to dye things by the way, but you have to rip it apart.

L. shows me her sorrel leaves and her rosemary sprigs. She was up north. I want to be up north. Like a Canadian novelist, happy to be lonely, happy to make up stories and rhubarb pies.

I don't tell L. this. I tell her about Toronto. She gets stern with me. She doesn't often do this so I know that she means it. She is a good listener. I always say intelligent well thought out things and then minutes later confess my desperate confusion. but why? but how. not? how why but not this? L. knows the answers to all these questions, and she is not afraid to confront me with them. And at the end of the conversation I tell her thanks for the massage, but she knows that I am thanking her for explaining things to me. I know that L. is afraid to love, but not afraid to love me.

I am drinking cold peach tea. In our dark kitchen. I hate that I have to work tonight. But lets not think about that too much now Miss. Scarlet.